Information Policy

The phrase “information policy” is not entirely commonplace in contemporary English. It does not possess the same self-evident significance as “foreign policy” or “public policy,” which point to a government’s respective interactions with international actors and with its domestic inhabitants. By contrast, a certain ambiguity sets in when we speak of information policy. Does it refer to a state’s efforts to gather information within its borders? The control of what information is available to its residents? The use of information for diplomatic purposes? International standard-setting? The public’s protections against governmental abuses of power, in the form of transparency or privacy laws? At times its constituent parts even seem to pull in opposite directions: “information,” as the word is deployed in the digital age, often seems to be characterized by a tendency to transgress national borders and contravene government planning—in other words, to subvert precisely the kinds of strategic designs for which policy is the instrument